


Coming Back In Pieces

by Batastic_Grayson



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath, Angst with a Happy Ending, Apologies, Castiel Loves Dean Winchester, Communication Failure, Dean Winchester is Bad at Feelings, DeanCas - Freeform, Destiel - Freeform, Emotional Baggage, Gay Sex, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Injured Dean Winchester, M/M, Makeup Sex, Minor Injuries, Multi, Protective Castiel (Supernatural), Sam Winchester Ships Castiel/Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:35:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23386729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batastic_Grayson/pseuds/Batastic_Grayson
Summary: It's a fight they've had over and over again. Cas doesn't understand why Dean seems dead set on getting himself killed, why he refuses to accept help, and why he takes these ridiculous risks. Dean doesn't know how to grapple with his feelings of inadequacy and fear, but he's gonna have to learn quickly, because Cas is demanding answers. Is it easier to skip this fight altogether? Or is it about time they finally got to the bottom of it all?
Relationships: Castiel & Sam Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 41





	Coming Back In Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> I set this fic after season 6, but before the bunker. Somewhere still comfortably in the crappy motel room days before we knew Chuck was the dick behind it all. Throw a dart in between those boundaries, and that's the time period. I hope you enjoy a bit of angst, but no worries, it ends well. Cas is hopelessly in love and Dean is just hopeless. What gives?
> 
> As always, I don't own the characters. I do own the story! Let me know what you thought below!

I knew I’d royally screwed the pooch long before I even made it back to the motel room. My phone lit up with at least a dozen calls on the drive back, and yet…I didn’t have the balls to answer any of them. I knew it would be Sam or God forbid, Cas, calling to ask me where the hell I was, why I’d just left them to handle this by myself.

If I’m being honest, I’m not entirely sure I understand my motives myself. Sometimes I get in these moods—Sam calls them benders—where I embark on self-destructive behavior for a while. Sometimes it’s a day, sometimes it’s a week. Sometimes it’s just one split-second decision that will probably get me killed. Either way, it usually ends up with me half-dead and wondering why the fuck I continue to do this to myself.

A therapist would have a fucking field day figuring that one out, but I don’t have the hutzpah to go into depth on the issue. I’m sure it’ll reveal itself as some depressing habit related to low self-worth and my need to self-sabotage any good thing I have, and what would that leave me? A whole lotta nothing.

So. I ignore it, and I bandage the wounds, and I apologize and thank whatever cosmic dumbass keeps pulling me back from the ledge.

Except, this time, it’s different.

Different because it’s been well over a year since I’ve done anything this stupid. Different because it isn’t just Sam this time depending on me. Different because Cas and I are together. And not platonically, not as fuck-buddies—the whole enchilada. We’re an honest-to-God couple, and having him look at me like he is right now…

It sucks. It really fucking sucks.

I’m seated on the edge of some dumpster-level mattress, nursing my wounded ego and more than a few injuries. It was a standard haunting. Poltergeist activity in the south of Missouri. I salted the remains, burned the corpse, the whole bit. But I didn’t bring backup, and I wasn’t counting on the crazed ex-lover to attack me with a shovel afterwards. Turns out she’d been pitching her BTK operation on the skirts of town—luring locals to her bed and then torturing them to death for kicks and giggles—and wasn’t too happy that I’d disturbed one of her deceased “lovers”. I’d been on the receiving end of that wrath when she’d strapped me to a kitchen chair and worked me over for a few hours.

Eventually, I got loose and stabbed the crazy bitch, but that was of course after she’d dislocated a shoulder and carved me up pretty good.

Cas starts swabbing alcohol across a particularly nasty gash on my abdomen. I suck in a sharp breath when he applies a little bit too much pressure, and I can tell from the look in his baby blues sweeping up that he’s mad at me. It was evident the moment I shuffled into the motel room, looking like Freddy Krueger’s Friday night hook-up, and he’d remained silent, that I fucked up. Sam had gracefully excused himself to get us some grub soon after. He may as well have mouthed to me from the doorway, “Good luck, asshole”.

It’s even more evident how mad Cas is now, with him kneeling in front of me, first aid kit spread at his knees as he works to patch me up. His dark brows are knit low over his eyes, and his movements are quick and methodical—not at all like he normally is in regards to me. It makes me feel ill with guilt and remorse, and it isn’t long of the awkward silence before I start to squirm and I’m eventually forced to speak.

“Cas, I…” I mutter the words, but it’s enough to receive a scathing look of reproach from him.

“Don’t.” His answer is a quick retort, bitten off in a gravelly tone that would normally make me hot and bothered. Right now, it just makes me feel about two inches tall.

I inhale a sigh, shifting slightly so he can more easily steri-strip a cut across my lower ribs. “Cas…can you just…can you let me explain?”

“No.”

I lift a brow, “No?”

Navy eyes flash up to mine, and for once, they’re cold with anger. The expression is so unnatural on him, he looks more like a stranger than a lover.

Eventually, his mouth flattens, and he looks back down. His fingers have gone white against my skin as he washes away more blood. “No.”

I sigh, “Look, I know you’re pissed at me and, well…I don’t blame you—I should’ve been more careful and—”

“What you _should’ve_ done was trust me when I said it was a bad idea Dean.” He’s scowling now, and it sends a lance right through me when his jaw firms and he shakes his head, “But that’s irrelevant now, isn’t it? You did what you always do.”

I shouldn’t be defensive. He has every right to be angry with me. But even so, I feel my hackles rise of their own accord, prickling and poking and urging me to fight back. To get nasty. I resist the urge with great difficulty, and I manage a response only half civil.

“And what is that?”

Cas doesn’t seem interested in yielding any ground tonight, because his eyes never waver. He continues staring at me, one hand poised in a fist on the bedspread.

“I tell you one thing, you do another. I beg you to do something, and you refuse. I beg you _not_ to do something, and you do it anyway. Anything I ask, you will do the opposite. And not only that, but you repeatedly put yourself in danger. Why? Why do you _insist_ on taking these moronic risks that could get you killed?”

I blink at him, stunned when he continues on as if he’s just been holding this inside, waiting for the right moment to spring it on me. He’s gripping my knees now, features twisted and pained and angry. I can’t decide what emotion is bleeding across his features, but it pulls on something inside me that feels an awful lot like shame and love all in one.

“What? Is it some kind of misguided complex that urges you to kill yourself by any means possible at the expense of all those around you? Are you really so—so ridiculously starved of worth that you think I wouldn’t care if you died? That it wouldn’t end me to lose you, especially to something as stupid as this! I ask myself, is it really so hard to trust me—just for once in your life, Dean, trust me and believe that I need you? Is it something I’m doing? Something I’m not doing? Because I can’t figure it out, and I am so…”

His voice falters, weakens like wet newspaper buckling, and it nearly breaks me, “I am so goddamn tired of you coming back to me in pieces. I worry that someday…you’ll do something like this and you won’t come back at all. You’ll hatch some stupid plan, and you’ll run off without me out of some unknown need to prove yourself, and you’ll get yourself killed. And I can’t—"

Cas stops, and his eyes shutter closed. He draws in a deep breath, reining himself in like he’s prone to do, and his hands loosen on my knees. He leans away from me, and instead moves from the floor to sit on the bed beside me. When his eyes turn to me again, I see the real emotion the anger was masking. It’s unnamable, but God it’s terrible to look at. It’s everything I never wanted to give Cas, and nothing, all at once.

We sit in stillness for a few moments, listening to the sound of the tap dripping from the bathroom. I’ve never been the cuddly type—it’s vulnerable to touch and be touched. And despite my previous sexual history, I struggle to invest emotionally with partners. Is it fear? Some fucked up idea I have that tells me I don’t deserve it? I don’t know, and honestly, I don’t really want to.

But what I do know, is that I love Cas. I love him more than I’d admit to anyone besides myself, and I’ve hurt him. I’ve screwed up, and not for the first time in my life, I need to apologize.

I pull in a deep breath when the silence has stretched for several minutes and Cas still has not stopped tracing the patterning on the comforter, and I let myself lean forward. I reach a hand to toy with his hair, always oddly soft and never, ever laying down like it should. Cas sighs into the contact, leaning into my hand with closed eyes and a mouth bracketed with worry.

“Cas, sweetheart…” His brows scrunch, but he doesn’t stop me when I stroke a thumb over his cheekbone. He’s got a day’s worth of stubble dusting his cheeks, and he looks tired, but he’s still Cas to me. Still mine.

I sigh deeply, asking that cosmic bastard in charge of all this to give me the right words. “I’m sorry. Sometimes, when I do shit like this, I just…I get wrapped up in my own head and I don’t think. I don’t…” He’s looking at me now with soft eyes, and it’s a miracle I don’t lose my sentence with how intently he’s watching me. “I forget that people depend on me, Cas. That I should trust people. It’s not…it’s a hard concept for me, but I don’t do it on purpose. I just—sometimes I lose my mind.”

He lifts a brow, “Losing your mind means trying to get yourself killed?”

I chuckle awkwardly, “Well, kind of.” I shrug, and I regret the motion as pain spiders through my bicep. God bless recently set dislocated shoulders. “Look, I’m not good at trusting people, and I’ve never…I don’t know how to do a relationship like this. I don’t know what that looks like and that’s not your fault, it’s nothing you’ve done…I’m just, I’m sorry I fucked up.”

Cas looks down. At some point in the past few minutes I dropped my hand, and he’s holding it between his in his lap. I never thought I’d enjoy the feel of calloused hands holding mine, let alone feel comforted by it, but when it’s Cas holding my hand…it feels like coming home.

His brow furrows, and his eyes are a shade of denim when he looks up to me. His hands squeeze mine in a small act of reassurance, and just like that, I can see he’s forgiven me. No fuss, no muss, no guilting. That quick.

Jesus, I love this man. He can be a real pain, but God I’m a bigger pain and he still puts up with me. What kind of luck is that?

Cas inhales a soft breath, and he brings the back of my hand to his mouth. He leaves a lingering kiss on my knuckles. “I’m glad you’re safe, Dean.”

He leans in like he’s done a million times before and kisses me softly, gently to avoid the split lip, and I buckle like a wet leaf. It isn’t long before I’m pushed back to the mattress and his hands are seeking out my skin like a man starved. I find myself fisting handfuls of his hair, too distracted by the touches and sounds and _tastes_ to notice any aches or pains.

I’m already undone and on my way to begging when he breaks the kiss momentarily and skims his nose along my jaw, whispering, “And Dean?”

I manage a throaty, “Uh-huh?”

“Next time you get the urge to lose your mind, please, for the love of God, bring me with you. That way I can at least try to keep you somewhat alive.”

Even if I wanted to argue, which I don’t, I’m way past that. I nod eagerly and murmur, “Sure. Whatever.”

I’m relieved beyond measure when he resumes that delightful thing he was doing with a smirk—and I’m also grateful that no one was here to see me earlier melting like a goddamn ice cream cone in June underneath the censure of Cas’ baby blues. It’s a bit embarrassing how easily Cas can make me pliant. Before him, I never would’ve pegged myself as a guy who would be so quickly undone by some messy hair, stubble, and a gravelly voice.

But here I am, laid out and definitely enjoying every goddamn minute of it. Cas knows it too.

Sam returns to the motel a safe time later, after we’ve finished “making up”, and the three of us eat dinner on the motel beds. When I tell them about the crazy bitch that tried to kill me with a shovel, we laugh and exchange memories of near deaths years previous. We enjoy a few beers and watch Frasier reruns, tucked into bed with bellies full of fast food and alcohol (and a shit ton of ibuprofen in my case). Later, when the hour runs late and Sam has long since started snoring loudly from the pull-out couch in the other room, I lay awake and remind myself how lucky I am to have Cas sleeping beside me.

I trace patterns across the bridge of his nose and his closed eyelids, over his brow bones and ears. I breathe in the smell of skin—laundry detergent, alpine mints, and earl grey tea. I remind myself of how lucky I am to be here. How lucky I am that he loves me. I memorize every detail of him, committing him to the hidden part of myself that stores nights like this. And when I feel myself at last falling asleep, I pull him close to me.

He burrows his face into my chest even in slumber, curling into my abdomen like a cat, then relaxing against me with a sigh, and I feel myself smile.

I pray. Not for the first time, or the last I suppose. I don’t really know who hears me, or if they appreciate what I say at all. But I thank them for Cas. I thank them for giving him to me, because I sure as hell don’t deserve him.


End file.
